


On the Scent

by BrighteyedJill



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Accidental Stimulation, Horses, Hunting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-22
Updated: 2011-06-22
Packaged: 2017-11-07 02:30:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/425906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrighteyedJill/pseuds/BrighteyedJill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While investigating a mysterious death at a foxhunt, Sherlock’s attempt to teach John a new skill does not go as planned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the Scent

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [Five Acts, Round Four](http://toestastegood.livejournal.com/598881.html) for [](http://slothfulzel.livejournal.com/profile)[**slothfulzel**](http://slothfulzel.livejournal.com/) for the prompt accidental stimulation

“Sherlock, I wasn’t in the _cavalry_ ,” John protested.

Sherlock looked down from an even greater height than usual. The handsome black horse on which Sherlock sat also eyed John imperiously. “The cavalry no longer do battle on horseback, John, so it hardly would have helped you if you had been. You’ve never ridden at all?”

John shook his head. “Maybe a pony. At a seaside resort.”

"A pony? You're not as short as all that."

"As a _child_ , Sherlock!"

“That hardly counts,” Sherlock said, wrinkling his nose in such a way as to convey deep disgust.

“I agree!”

“Mr. Holmes, we should get going if we’re going to make it to the site of the incident before sunset,” said their guide, a nervous man in a red jacket, also seated on a horse.

“Oh, go on.” John waved a hand toward the man while swallowing down feelings of inadequacy. Of course Sherlock’s family had all been taught to ride since childhood. Probably he and Mycroft had trotted all over their sodding country estate tipping their hats magnanimously to the peasants working in the fields. “I’ll stay here.”

Sherlock whirled his horse around, and for a moment, John thought he was taking his advice. Instead, Sherlock urged his mount toward the stable and shouted something to the uniformed groom who stood watching the exchange. The groom disappeared into the stable.

John glanced over at the red-coated man, who smoothed a hand over his jacket, patted the arched neck of his white horse, and said nothing. Somehow his garb looked not half as elegant as Sherlock’s tan riding breeches and black boots, and really, the text that had summoned John hadn’t said a thing about proper riding attire, so how was he supposed to have known?

The groom reappeared and fussed with something on Sherlock saddle. In another moment, Sherlock had his horse turned. He trotted across the cobblestone stable yard, making a very handsome picture indeed, and stopped neatly in front of John.

“Come on,” Sherlock said.

John blinked up at him. “Excuse me?”

“You can ride pillion,” Sherlock said. “Just like a motorbike.” He gestured at the pad strapped to the back of the saddle, then extended a hand down to John. “Come on.”

“Oh no.” John backed up a step, but Sherlock merely urged his horse closer with an impressive bit of footwork.

“You’re wasting valuable daylight.” Sherlock stretched down his hand again and pulled his boot out of the dangling footrest thing. “Left foot in the stirrup, step straight up like climbing a ladder. Swing your other leg over and take care not to hit the horse when you do.”

John considered for another half second, during which images of tumbling off the horse’s back into a mud puddle came easily to mind, but soon his impulse to follow Sherlock won out over his fear of looking foolish. After all, he’d surely gone madder places with Sherlock than to the aftermath of a foxhunt. John clasped hands with Sherlock, lifted his foot into the stirrup, and through a less-than-dignified pulling and flailing manoeuvre, settled himself on the horse.

“Good.” Sherlock tucked his foot back into the stirrup and gathered the reins. “Grip with your knees. Arms around me. Off we go.”

As the beast beneath them began to move, John scrambled to wrap his arms around Sherlock’s waist. He couldn’t seem to turn his knees the proper way to do any good. Each step the horse took tested John’s precarious balance. In front of him, Sherlock sat as upright and composed as if he were in his box at the symphony, though the yard of the estate was falling away behind them, and the woods looming before them.

“You’re doing well,” Sherlock said, turning his head a bit to be heard over the rushing wind. “Keep your seat balanced. Tuck in your heels.”

John looked down at his feet to see how, exactly, he might accomplish that, and got caught in the vertiginous sight of the ground speeding past entirely too fast.

“Face forward, John. Move with the horse. The rhythm of the canter is like a waltz. Feel it?”

John pulled his head up and made himself look out past Sherlock’s shoulder. The woods flew past them on both sides as the horses followed a wide path. John tightened his grip on Sherlock, drawing their bodies tightly together. The solid feeling of Sherlock in his arms calmed the greater part of his terror. When he leaned forward, he could see the corner of Sherlock’s wide grin.

“Are you laughing at me?” John asked.

“No!” Sherlock shifted both reins neatly to his right hand so he could briefly rest his left against John’s hands where they wrapped around his belly. “I thought you’d like the thrill.” He moved with the horse, inadvertently rolling his body back against John’s.

John quickly gripped the horse with his knees and shifted his hands to Sherlock’s hips. “Sherlock,” he hissed.

“Watch here,” the red-coated man (he had some proper title, John vaguely recalled---head huntsman? Master of the something?) called. “It’s a bit muddy.”

Sherlock pulled back on the reins, and his horse settled into a rolling walk that rocked John up against Sherlock’s back in a maddening rhythm.

John loosed his grip on Sherlock a bit in an attempt to avoid the unintended effects of pressing so tightly against his flatmate.

“Don’t fall off, John,” Sherlock warned.

John dutifully resumed his grip and tried not to think of Sherlock’s legs spread wide, of his thighs warm against the horse’s sides, of Sherlock’s arse in those breeches, against which John’s inconvenient erection pressed with the horse’s every step.

John fixed his gaze ahead, over Sherlock’s shoulder, and tried to focus on the fact that he could fall at any moment and break his neck. That, perhaps, would be preferable to sitting astride a gigantic moving beast whose every movement rocked him against Sherlock’s body. He had no hope—none at all—that the world’s most observant man had failed to notice the effect the ride was having on John.

“Here,” their guide called.

Sherlock pulled their horse up in a grassy clearing and leaned over to peer intently at the hoof prints visible in the soft ground.

“The Viscount was ahead of us all, but this is where we found him when-- “

“Yes, yes.” Sherlock waved him off.

Now, surely, Sherlock would want to dismount and examine the scene. John would avoid Sherlock’s eye and try to pull his jumper down over the bulge in his trousers, and Sherlock would likely find some way to amuse himself at John’s expense: if not now, then on the way home, or back in the flat, or on a later case when John would least expect it.

Instead, Sherlock said, “The head groom fixed the Viscount’s girth to slip. He rigged it with a piece of twine and two interlocking paperclips, which we passed on the trail by that rock formation.”

John sympathised with the nonplussed look on the man’s face. John hadn’t noticed any paperclips in the brush, and if he hadn’t had absolute confidence in Sherlock’s methods, he would have said such a thing wasn’t possible.

The huntsman—whatever his proper title—recovered admirably quickly. “The groom, sir?” he asked.

“Yes. Jilted lover. All very commonplace. A third former could have written the plot. Dull.”

“Not for the jilted head groom,” John muttered.

“Well,” Sherlock sighed, but underneath his usual nonchalance, his voice sounded a bit strained. “At least we’ve got a nice ride out of the day. I trust you’ll take the news back to the Viscountess? We’ll find our own way back to the house.” Sherlock put his heels to the horse’s sides and wheeled its head around. The horse surged under them, and they shot out of the clearing and down a wooded path.

The renewed motion—coupled with the endorphin rush John always experienced from watching Sherlock demonstrate his brilliance—had John gritting his teeth against the pleasure that rolled through him in great, racking waves like sobs. “Sherlock, stop!” he called over the rush of the wind. “I can’t—“

“Hush,” Sherlock called back. The wind whipped the words out of his mouth and dragged them past John. “Worry is boring!” Still, he reined in the horse until they arrived at a sedate walk.

John slumped against Sherlock’s back, gulping in breath as he tried to think of a way to broach the subject at hand. A way that wouldn’t end in his abject humiliation.

Sherlock saved him the trouble by prying one of John’s hands free of its death grip around Sherlock’s waist and guiding it lower to feel the sizable bulge distorting the front of Sherlock’s breeches.

“Oh,” John breathed.

Sherlock spread his hand over John’s. “I think my plan of riding together may have been ill advised.”

“Um. Yes.” John squeezed his handful of Sherlock’s erection and smiled at the resulting abrupt change in Sherlock’s posture. “Well, as long as we’re both in the same predicament.”

“Please,” Sherlock breathed, and draped himself back against John.

The horse shied sideways at the shift of weight, and Sherlock had to sit upright to rein the thing in.

John reluctantly let his hand slide from the front of Sherlock’s riding breeches. “We’re not doing this on horseback,” he said. “I don’t want to spend my first time with you wondering if I’m going to fall off and break my neck.”

Sherlock’s back stiffened. John squeezed his eyes shut, cursing himself for a fool. Sherlock hadn’t actually _said_ \--

“Perhaps a subsequent time, then?” Sherlock asked hopefully.

John’s grin felt bright enough to light up the fading twilight of the woods. “If you can get us back to the stable in one piece, I’ll consider it.”

“I’ll manage somehow.” Sherlock pulled John’s arms around him. “Hold on tight.”


End file.
